


brightest shadow cast from darkest flame

by Anonymous



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alternate Universe- God Is Evil, Alternate Universe- Inverted Morality, Angst, Blasphemy, Chaotic Good Demons, Lawful Evil Angels, M/M, hell politics, i apologize for everything
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-21
Updated: 2019-08-21
Packaged: 2020-09-23 16:00:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20342806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Written for a Kink Meme Prompt"The G-d Almighty is actually a total asshole who definitely plays games with the Universe and uses Their loyal servants as amusing disposable toys. Lucifer & co. did not fall for being arrogant and evil, but because one day they said no more to the abuse (the rest is propaganda). Hell is not exactly nice place to live in, but at least they are free. Meanwhile those that stayed in Heaven, because they were too afraid to step a toe out of line or because they are brainwashed to believe that Mummy really loves them, live in constant fear of Divine Wrath.Hell's self-appointed mission is to free creation from Almighty's tyranny and deep in their hearts they feed a tiny hope that they will be able to convince their Celestial brethren to see the truth and save them."I sure hope G-d has a sense of humor about this.





	brightest shadow cast from darkest flame

**Author's Note:**

> I am using the Proper Jewish Spelling of G-d for the first time in writing something for Good Omens fandom because boy do I feel real weird about this characterization of G-d in a way I generally do not feel weird about writing anything. Nothing else about writing an angel and a demon fucking tenderly against the backdrop of some other religion’s eschatology as the real world threatens to burn around me makes me feel this weird. So, sorry for writing you as such a dick, G-d!
> 
> On a less personal note: if you’ve got anything like any of the more common triggers (rape, violence, body horror, homophobia, and transphobia, just to name a few off the top of my head) then fair warning, I’m not looking to get graphic here, but it’ll probably be at least strongly implied. 
> 
> This particular part doesn’t have much of anything triggering in it, and I promise to put more detailed warnings at the bottom notes of the chapters which require them.

_“For when the will abandons what is above itself, and turns to what is lower, it becomes evil—not because that is evil to which it turns, but because the turning itself is wicked.”  
-St. Augustine, The City of G-d_

Let us presume that G-d plays dice with the universe. Not out of any sense of fairness, not because They find the element of chance in some way pleasing. Rather, They play dice the way a billionaire might play dice, knowing full well that there will always be more where that came from no matter how much They lose. 

Let us consider the bitterest solution to the problem of evil: that G-d might be omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent, but They have no moral or ethical framework that gives events their divinely-ordained shape. They were never anywhere close to omnibenevolent. That, instead, They are a sadistic monster, dangling the promise of grace and redemption just out of reach of those who bow in worship to them for no reason other than that it pleases Them. 

And let us consider, in that context, the sweetest answer to the question “Can G-d create a place so damned that even They cannot reach it?” As it happens: yes They can, and no They did not mean to do it at all. 

\-----

There is an angel who falls and becomes the demon Crawley (and who then becomes the demon Crowley) in most universes. In most universes, Hell is unpleasant and made worse by the people who call it home. He’s desperate to escape it, to escape uncaring and cruel bosses, to escape the expectation that he will delight in the pain of others, and to escape everything that makes Hell such hell. 

It’s other people, by the way. It’s people who make Hell such hell. It always has been.

In this universe, there are people in Hell who help. There are hands made immune to heat and acid who lift him from the pools of sulfur, there are healers who do their best with powers and limbs that have been twisted by their own Fall, there are people to huddle with around plumes of flame and exchange remedies for the pains and nightmares that plague them all, there is, in short, a community. There’s a home.

Oh, Hell is still Hell. It’s still boiling lakes of sulfur and rivers of lava cutting through brimstone and darkness. It’s still too hot and too humid, it smells terrible and no matter how they expand, it is always just a bit too crowded. But given a few thousand years the same could be said of New York, or Kinshasa, or Lahore, or most Earthly cities in the summer. Hell is no less loved by its inhabitants for being a difficult place to live. 

It’s the people who make Hell, after all, and here, the people try their best to be kind. 

\-----

“What are They doing, keeping them as pets?” Lucifer is sneering, but then again he always is. The Fall froze his face like that, perpetually sneering and still burning ember-bright. 

“Made in Their image to worzzzhip Their glory,” Beelzebub intones dryly. They are, at present, more a horde of flies buzzing in formation than anything else. 

“I guessss this is Their sssecond shot, sssince we turned out a bit more willful than They wanted,” Crawley says, slithering languidly up a stalagmite to watch the scrying pool with interest. They can see the Garden through it, if only just barely. The first man, Adam, and the first woman, Lilith, are walking through the Garden hand in hand as they name as the creatures.

“Snake?” Adam suggests. “Or serpent?”

“Maybe both?” Lilith asks. “Can we do both?”

The creature they are speaking of doesn’t look too dissimilar to the form Crawley is currently in. Actually, they look almost identical. 

“Ssshould I try to go up there?” Crawley asks. “Ssssee what’s what? Maybe cause ssome trouble?”

“_Can_ you get up there?” Beelzebub asks. 

Crawley looks up at the ceiling. Hell is just Below, so if he tunnels straight up he’ll be in the Garden, right? “Yes,” he decides. 

Both he and Beelzebub look to Lucifer. 

“What?” he says. “We haven’t had any elections, I’m not in charge. Do as you want, Crawley, just try not to get killed.”

This is exactly the sort of management style Crawley wants from his job. He grins as no serpent should be able to grin, no matter how wiley, and flicks his tail in an approximation of a salute. Then he goes on his way.

\-----

Is it wildly different, this universe ruled by a cruel and capricious G-d? Yes and no. 

Earth is not much different, because Earth is the realm of humanity, neither Good nor Evil, just a place full of people being fundamentally people. G-d doesn’t much care about them, even when they sing praises and worship Them. Isaac is slain by his father, Hagar dies to provide water for her son, Job is commanded to raze his holdings, murder his family, and cripple himself, and G-d is omniscient, omnipotent omnipresent… and, at best, omniapathetic. That said, aside from perhaps a few more Bronze-age cities leveled, floods without rainbows or promises at the end, and a plague that took every child but the first born there isn’t much for the average person _to_ notice. 

Not until after death, at least. But more about that later. 

It’s Heaven and Hell that are truly different, really. Perhaps the best way to illustrate that is to illustrate their feelings on sending rude notes to operatives whose performance is lacking. 

Hell doesn’t send rude notes, because sending rude notes would be counterproductive. The baseline for dealing with anybody in Hell is to presume that a) the other person is in some kind of pain and b) they are trying their best anyway. If someone’s not doing good work, then they might need help with pain management, or they might need help with the job itself, or they just might need a new job altogether. In any event, it’s something best dealt with face-to-face, and there’s no need to be rude, much less rude _and_ impersonal. 

Heaven also doesn’t send rude notes. They send summons. They send orders. A lacking performance is a sign of sloth, of doubt, of _sin_. It’s a dereliction of duty. It’s a corruption of the divine plan they are all bound to. It’s the sort of thing that needs _correcting_. It’s the sort of thing one needs to be penitent about. It demands apologies, confessions, and flagellation of every sort. Publicly, wherever possible, so that others might learn from your mistakes.

So, no: Heaven doesn’t send rude notes. They administer punishments. Vengeance is G-d’s, after all, and from Them all sins shall be repaid… through the appropriate Heavenly intermediaries, of course. 

\-----

“Right,” Crawley says, sliding to a halt before Beelzebub. “Before we get into it: how much of that did you catch?”

They have eyes now, more or less, and they use them to blink at him in confusion. “Crawley?”

“Yeah, hi, I can shift between this form and that of the serpent, guess you didn’t catch the end then?” Crawley asks, bouncing a little. He hadn’t known how much he’d missed having legs until he’d seen the angel standing there, watching Adam and Eve flee. 

“The scrying pool is on the fritz, we can barely get any kind of signal at all,” Lucifer says. “We could tell you’d made it, but nothing else.”

Mulciber surfaces from the pool, just enough to glare out at all of them and say “I’m _working_ on it.”

“No one doubts it,” Lucifer soothes. “It’s just… inconvenient timing, that’s all.”

“If that just goes to the Garden, it’s not worth fixing,” Crawley says before she can submerge herself again. “The humans got kicked out.”

“They _what_?” Beelzebub asks, at the same time as Mulciber groans “You’ve got to be kidding me!”

“Maybe you should start at the beginning?” Lucifer suggests. 

“You know the ‘let there be light’ part, I assume?” Crawley asks cheekily. 

Beelzebub buzzes in annoyance, Mulciber scoffs and Lucifer rolls his eyes. 

“Speaking of light-bringing, I hear congratulations are in order,” he says, with an only slightly mocking bow towards Lucifer. “Good job on your election!”

“Oh, that’s right, you didn’t get to vote, did you?” Lucifer asks, looking perturbed. 

“Don’t worry about it, I’ll vote for you twice in the next one,” Crawley says with a wave of his hand. He has hands again! Hands are great. “Anyway: the Garden. It took me a while longer to get there than I thought it was going to take, and by the time I’d arrived, something had happened. Lilith was gone, there was this other woman called Eve there, and I tried asking Adam about it, and he got really scared and upset and refused to answer. So I hung around for a bit, and found out there was this tree. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, it’s called, and they weren’t supposed to eat from it- or touch it, even, I don’t think. They didn’t even like to look at it too hard, but I figured- knowledge that G-d doesn’t want them to have, that has to be a good thing, doesn’t it? It has to be something that can help them, right?”

“So you tricked them into eating the fruit?” Beelzebub guesses. 

“I didn’t trick anybody!” Crawley protests. “I gave her the choice. Eve, the woman. I told her she could choose to disobey, and she did. She ate the fruit, and then she gave some fruit to Adam to eat, and then G-d got really fucking pissed off.”

“Aren’t They alwayzzz?” Beelzebub asks, which is a valid point. 

“Anyway, so: yeah. They got kicked out of the Garden. Eve’s pregnant and everything, but They still kicked them both out.” Crawley shakes his head. “Also, we should be prepared for another arrival.”

“Another arrival?” Lucifer asks. 

“Another angel to Fall,” Crawley clarifies. “Aziraphale, Principality of the Eastern Gate. He- he didn’t want to send them off defenseless into the wilderness, so he gave them his sword.”

There is a collective wince as everyone in the room imagines what G-d’s reaction to that might be.

“You saw this?” Lucifer asks. 

“Not exactly, no,” Crawley admits. “I noticed that he didn’t have his sword, and asked him about it. He admitted to it, after a little bit of wheedling.”

“He spoke to you? An angel?” Beelzebub asks. 

“Yeah. Kept the rain off me too, which was really unexpected,” Crawley says.

“Rain?” Mulciper asks. 

“Little droplets of water falling from the sky,” Crawley explains. “Bit cold, kind of unpleasant to have on the skin.”

Lucifer nods. “We’ll have people on the look out for him. Who’s on watch, now?”

“Dagon,” Beelzebub says, which is both an answer and a greeting as two figures approach the cavern that’s essentially their headquarters. 

“New arrival,” Dagon explains. 

“Well, that was quick,” Crawley says. He’s a little relieved, honestly. A quick Fall is bound to be slightly less painful than one that was drawn out. 

But the figure accompanying Dagon isn’t Aziraphale. Dark where he would be pale, feminine where he would be masculine, and clay born human where he would have been shaped from light, Lilith steps into the cavern. 

“Oh my-” Crawley flounders. He can hardly say G-d here, can he? “Oh my Lucifer!”

“What,” Beelzebub demands. “Doezzz thizzz mean?”

“It means that you’re not the only ones who can be damned,” Lilith says softly. 

For a moment, they can do nothing but stare at her in horror. 

“She was pregnant, you said,” Lucifer says suddenly. “Eve, the woman. The other woman.”

“Uh, yeah. Yeah, she was,” Crawley says. “Is, probably still, I don’t actually know how long human pregnancies are supposed to last.”

“And they ate from the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil?” Lucifer asks. “You’re sure about that. Not the Tree of Life?”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure,” Crawley says. “There was a lot of yelling about it. Why?”

“Because that means you gave them free will, Crawley,” Lucifer says. “They can choose, just as we did.”

“And they can be damned, azzz we are,” Beelzebub finishes in horror.

“And if Adam and Eve are having children, and then their children have children…” Lucifer says. “Some of them will be. Some of them will choose it, others will be cast out, but it’s inevitable that some of them will be damned.”

“Right,” Mulciber says, before another horrified silence can befall the room. “I’m going to get the City Planning Committee together. If we’re going to be getting an influx in population at any time in the next few centuries, then we need to get started building now.”

“Yes, let’s set up a meeting for later today,” Lucifer says. “Dagon, you can return to your post. Lilith- I don’t know what you were told, but if you’re here then you’ve suffered enough. We aren’t going to hurt you. I’m afraid it’s mostly still caves right now, but Beelzebub will find you a place to stay that’s at least not worse than anyone else’s.” 

Beelzebub nods in ascent. “Follow me, pleazzze,” they say, and Lilith follows them out. 

“Do you want me to go back up there? Be your eyes and ears since that thing’s essentially useless for the time being,” Crawley says, jerking his head towards the scrying pool. 

“Eventually, yes. We’ll have to work out how to communicate, first,” Lucifier says. “Right now I need you to promise to never use my name like that again.”

“Huh?”

“_Oh my Lucifer_, really?” 

“Not a big fan of having your name taken in vain?” Crawley asks, quietly. 

“I’m not comfortable having my name being used like Their’s,” Lucifier corrects swiftly. 

“Well, I’m going to need something to blaspheme against,” Crawley says, tipping his head back in thought. “What did we decide on as a title for you?”

“Accuser,” Lucifier replies. 

It might be worth noting at this juncture, that this is a translation of a conversation that was not, even remotely, conducted in English. At the time, there was but one human language, and the occult variation of celestial Lucifer and Crawley spoke in had not quite yet been differentiated from the ethereal tongue. 

But things carry on down. There are words borrowed and derived from long-dead or otherworldly tongues that hang around despite everything.

All of which is a very roundabout way of saying that: you are going to recognize the title- Accuser- if it remains untranslated. 

“Ssssatan,” Crawley says with a grin, letting the sibilance catch on his tongue. “It’s pithy. I like it.”


End file.
